


To Witness

by ShrimpZilla



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 19:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4112581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpZilla/pseuds/ShrimpZilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Capable and Nux talk about their friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Witness

**Author's Note:**

> written for kink meme

“What?” Capable asks when she cannot stand the War Boy’s stare any longer. She’s trying to keep watch but his presence is distracting and tense. She felt pity for him when she found him, cradled him and shushed his broken rambling, but now it is like being next to something waiting to explode. She grips a tool in the hand he cannot see and presses herself a little further away. He starts when she looks at him and at the tone in her voice, looks away hastily as if embarrassed to have been caught. Capable relaxes slightly.

“You weren’t his favorite,” the War Boy—Nux—mumbles. He glances over at her hesitantly again. “I’d think you would be is all.” His eyes are wide and disturbingly innocent. The image transposes itself over the violence and danger he represents. The shadows play across his skull scratched face and to see the bright blue staring from deep black recesses sends a shiver down her spine.

“No, Angharad had that privilege.” Her voice is dark. Grief wells in her chest until it hurts. “And now she’s dead,” she spits. Nux shifts closer. She feels the wild energy rebuilding itself within him. He had lain whimpering in the rig even after she had comforted him. Now that he is up he seems restless, hands moving through pockets and body on edge. 

“Tell her story,” he entreats. Capable gives him a curious look. “Gotta remember those that die so well,” he offers, a smile on his lips that makes her uncomfortable with how it stretches his scars while underscoring his youth. She looks out into the night while she pushes down her tears and waits for the lump in her throat to die down. Nux waits seemingly, miraculously patient.

“She was there when I got there. I don’t think I would have survived without her. She’s the one that told us, that made us believe we weren’t things. This was her plan. To get us out of the Vault—“

“But why’d you wanna leave the Vault?” Nux interrupts. She looks at him just as confused as he seems.

“What?”

“You got food n’ water? Safe place to sleep? Better’n what’s going on down below. You were taken care of, yeah?”

“No.” She wants to be angry, feels it bubbling up from her stomach into her heart and heating her face. She wants to scream and yell and push him out onto the sand to be just as crushed as Angharad had been. But she remembers her sister’s words. She remembers how she had seen the War Boy as just a much a victim of Joe as they all were. So she bites down on the inside of her cheek and listens as Nux speaks.

“Immortan Joe picked you out special. He—“  
“No,” she says again forcefully. Nux lowers his gaze, his body tense and she wonders if he expects her to hit him.

“…that’s all I ever wanted. To be picked out special by him.” His shoulders fall and his body seems lax suddenly in its despondence. “Fouled that up when I got the chance though, didn’t I?” He lifts his hand and she flinches from his fist before realizing it isn’t for her. She grabs his arm before he can do himself much damage. He looks at her as she presses his arm back down to his side, looks at her like she has just poured cold water over him as he lay thirsty in the desert. It unnerves her and excites her and she wishes Angharad were here to explain these things.

“His attention is a curse,” she says to him slowly. “Look what happened to you when he noticed you.” Nux flits his eyes away for a moment, remembering maybe or trying to understand the blasphemy she speaks. When he looks back he has a hopelessness darkening the brilliant blue of his eyes. Capable continues, wanting, needing him to understand and see the truth and wrongness of Joe. “We didn’t want to be his wives,” she explains and cannot help the waver in her voice. “Didn’t anyone ever try to make you do something you didn’t want to do?” The question comes out low like a whisper and she releases the arm she hadn’t realized she was still holding down. Nux looks from her to his arm, eyes tracing the places her fingers had left as if he can read something about her in the war paint he still wears. There is silence and Capable is convinced that he doesn’t understand, that he never could. 

“Before,” he starts suddenly, still looking down. “Slit tried to make me stay so he could drive the Fury Road.” He looks up her and grins proudly. “I knocked him down to show him. I’m the driver.” She smiles back at him because she cannot help herself. He seems genuinely pleased to tell her what he’s done, to let her know that he was a driver and that he wouldn’t be left behind. She supposes he doesn’t connect that his pride comes from a dark place. He had insisted on coming out, riding out to find them and take them back. 

“It’s the same. I’m you,” she touches a hand to her chest and then to his and she can feel his heart motoring so fast it makes his scar vibrate, “and Joe is Slit and…” The analogy falls apart in her mouth. Frustration takes her. It doesn’t make sense. He won’t understand. She goes to move her hand from him, shaking her head and wondering how Angharad was good with words. Nux’s fingers drift delicately over hers as if he wants to stop her from pulling away but he doesn’t and whatever thin panic that moment of want in him caused fades and is replaced with something that feels affectionate. She didn’t think a War Boy, any boy, knew how to do anything but take. This isn’t the opposite of taking, but it’s warm enough for Capable.

“This is you takin’ back your wheel,” he continues for her, “so you can ride to glory.” She laughs at the earnestness of his voice and nods a little.

“I don’t know about glory,” she says lightly. He jumps so that he is balancing himself in a squat. Capable leans away slightly, his swift and erratic movements give her goosebumps and a part of her worries he’ll flail and she’ll be cast away. 

“Oh, yes, glory!” He insists. “Riding in the war rig with the whole war party on your backs.” He gazes out into the darkness with a wide eyed stare as if he expects his words to have summoned them. “Wild shiny.” He licks his lips and swivels back to look at her, hands pressing down into the space between them so that there is little actual space between them. Capable watches him cautiously. “And you friend—“

“Angharad,” she corrects but it doesn’t seem to slow his frantic speech.

“—she’s gone straight to Valhalla—“

“Don’t say that,” Capable interrupts and whatever urgency is in her tone quiets him. He looks at her as if she is the most inscrutable thing he has ever come across and she wonders if that might actually be true. What complicated things are there for War Boys to think about? There are engines and the Immortan and the constant desire for death and destruction. Where would something like she fit into a mind that only thought in terms of dying?

“But she has,” he says slowly. “She was chrome and she died and you witnessed her.” He points at her as if he has caught her in his logic. She swats it away angrily. 

“I didn’t! Why would she want to go to Joe’s terrible Valhalla?” Her tone is hard and biting and she sees Nux retract his finger, retract his eagerness, retract his body from its place startlingly close to her side. He scoots back and frowns down into his hands, his brows drawn tight and her stomach wavers at the idea that she has made him angry. But he made her angry. She doesn’t want to think of Angharad in Valhalla surrounded by War Boys whose only instinct is to please the Immortan. Angharad wanted the Green Place. She wanted more for them. 

“Maybe,” he says at length and it strikes her that he was thinking not sitting sullen and angry, “there’s a different place wives—“ he winces and hazards a glance at her to see how his misused word has affected her before continuing, “not War Boys go. Maybe she’s there.” Capable nods, strands of her hair falling loose around her face. Her eyes are hot with tears again, tears for her fallen sister, for the unknown, for this War Boy struggling so desperately with this new turn on his world. Mistaking her silence for something more than just a moment to gather herself Nux continues, inching himself a little closer once again, “It was good that you witnessed her. That’s what friends do.”

“Slit. He was your friend?” She asks after she has quelled her tears. Beside her Nux nods vigorously clearly grateful to be on what he must consider safer conversation territory.

“Oh yes. My best mate. I was the driver and he was the lancer. No better bond than that.”

“But, he tried to leave you behind?” She asks confused. She doesn’t know much about War Boys, about their culture and world. To her they are just painted death, vicious in their dedication to the warped faith Joe has instilled in them. They are anti-seeds. They are guzzoline. They are things that do not belong in the Green Place. And looking now at Nux, having heard what he felt was a heartbreaking tale of failure, having touched him in what was obviously the only affection he has ever known she pities them as well as fears them. And she wonders if there isn’t something that can be done, for the ones like Nux at least.

“Yeah,” Nux continues casually and comfortably. He faces forward and leans back on his hands with a far less trembling energy as he had before. It soothes Capable as well and she feels herself relaxing in his company. “Slit’s a bit of a smeg, you know? But I don’t mind. We’re linked together. Brothers, almost. Meant to lead each other straight to Valhalla. We’re meant to witness for each other when the end comes.” He pauses and then stops, whatever else he had to say dying under some realization that Capable can begin to guess at. She leans a little closer.

“If someone doesn’t witness you you can’t get to Valhalla?” She asks. Nux shakes his head twice, hanging it slightly.

“No,” he answers low and husky. “Someone’s gotta be there to see how shiny you go down. To know. I’m supposed to witness for Slit, but I left him behind with Blood Bag’s boot…” Capable bites her lip at the resurgence of his sadness. 

“I’m sure he’s got someone to witness him,” she offers. Nux looks over at her and she watches as he brightens or makes himself brighten to appease her. He nods.

“Yeah, yeah. A new driver maybe.” But this brightness is quick lived and he wilts again into a gloomy, distant staring. “A new best mate.” Capable doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t know if the War Boys would simply toss Nux to the wayside because he had messed up but she doesn’t put it passed them. She doesn’t doubt that Slit has a new driver and if maybe that means a new best friend as well. Does Nux get forgotten because he is sickly? Because he is soft? Because he is here in the back of the rig with her, pressing closer and pulling away with hesitance and nervousness and something innocent and wondering and reverent in his wide blue eyes? “You think, maybe, when the war party catches us I’ll be the one to take Slit out?” The fact that he says when rather than if drives a cold spike in her heart. He is smiling though and it makes it easier for Capable to think that it is just the way he speaks, a slip up, and nothing that actually tells of the future. “I could give him a glory death and witness him all the same. …He won’t witness me now,” he says as if he has been mulling this over for an extended period of time and only just been brave enough to say it. “Nothing I do will be chrome to him.” He looks near tears and Capable wants to touch him but suddenly she is too afraid and cannot move. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t understand. She is thinking about the things he could do that might make him chrome again to his friends, thinking about him taking her and her sisters back to the Immortan. “Do you think the Imperator will witness me?” He whispers to no one in particular it seems because it is so quiet. Capable jumps after a moment when she realizes the questions.

“You still want to go to Valhalla?”

“But I got no mates now,” and by the way he continues Capable is certain that he hadn’t truly been asking her, that maybe he is so deep in his grief at this thought that he cannot remember she is there, “’sides Larry and Barry and they want me to have a soft death. They won’t witness.” He turns his head swiftly to look at her. Eyes wide, imploring, begging. “The Imperator would have to right? If she saw me go glorious and historic for you?” And this surprises Capable more than anything else, more than find him here curled and miserable.

“You’d die protecting us?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, not necessarily the most assuring gesture. “I think what you’re doing… it’s shiny.” He nods to himself, pleased with his answer. “The Immortan can get new wives. Wives that want to be in the Vault.” He smiles at her and Capable smiles back. She doesn’t think he understands the depth of what it is to be the wife of the Immortan but at least he understands that she and her sisters did not want it. That’s enough, she thinks, for now at least. He looks out behind them, keeping watch for something that she doesn’t want and that she can’t tell if he does. Capable puts her hand down over his, feels him go stiff at the touch and then relax. He holds her pinky between his thumb and index finger lightly, self-consciously. She is his only friend, she realizes, and it hurts a little to think.


End file.
